Friday, August 5, 2016

A few weeks ago, volunteers and staff found juvenile octopuses in the tide pools at Haystack Rock. You can see pictures of them in the last blog post. This past week, another juvenile octopus was found in a tide pool where the water was receding. The octopus was placed in an aquarium to await the incoming tide. Watch the video to see the octopus move around.

Moon jelly

Volunteers and staff are also seeing a number of jelly fish. Pictured above is a moon jelly, Aurelia aurita. The jellyfish is translucent, usually about 25–40 cm (10–16 in) in
diameter, and can be recognized by its four horseshoe-shaped gonads,
easily seen through the top of the bell. It feeds by collecting medusae, plankton, and mollusks with its tentacles, and bringing them into its body for digestion. (Wikipedia)

Volunteer, Stephen Grace, also found this Pacific sea nettle jelly, Chrysaora fuscescens, about a mile north of Haystack Rock. Sea nettles
have a distinctive golden-brown bell with a reddish tint. The bell can
grow to be larger than one meter (three feet) in diameter in the wild,
though most are less than 50 cm across. The long, spiraling, white oral
arms and the 24 undulating maroon tentacles may trail behind as far as
15 feet. For humans, its sting is often irritating, but rarely
dangerous. (Wikipedia)

Pacific sea nettle jelly
(photo credit: Stephen Grace)

What kind of jelly fish do you think this was?

While octopus and jelly fish are both invertebrates, they have many
differences. For an interesting comparison between octopus and jelly
fish, visit this site.